Welcome to Pathology Student!

My name is Kristine Krafts, MD, and I love teaching pathology.
If you’re looking for straightforward answers to your pathology questions,
you’ve come to the right place!

Blood cookies!

Blood cookies!

Okay, that was disturbing. But it was a lot of fun making cookies in the shape of different blood cells for our lectures on anemia and leukemia this week! The colors didn't always turn out very appetizing - I was going for realness, though, and I think I nailed it!...

How to tell apart promyelocytes and myelocytes

How to tell apart promyelocytes and myelocytes

Here's a quandry you may find yourself in soon, if you have a habit of sitting at the multiheaded scope down in hematopathology. You're looking at a bone marrow smear, and you can differentiate between some of the myeloid cells (blasts have a high nuclear-cytoplasmic...

What’s the difference between serum and plasma?

What’s the difference between serum and plasma?

Q. Quick question for you about serum vs. plasma: I wrote in my notes during class that serum is plasma without the clotting factors. But then in another lecture, the professor talked about coagulation tests, and he said you add reagents to plasma and then wait...

BBG podcast: How to make your presentations awesome!

If you're a student of pathology, you will at some point be faced with transfusion medicine, and you'll need to find yourself a good resource for learning the stuff. The best source out there is Blood Bank Guy, created by the incredibly intelligent yet down-to-earth...

How to study for the Step 1 USMLE, part 3

How to study for the Step 1 USMLE, part 3

For the third and final part of our series on how to study for boards (see our first and second installments here), we'll take a look at advice from students who have taken the boards over the past few years. The students who just took the exam are your best source...

How to study for the Step 1 USMLE, part 2

How to study for the Step 1 USMLE, part 2

This is the second in a series of three posts on boards (check out the last one, which covered how to choose resources and set up a study plan). In this post, we'll discuss a strategy for how to answer the multiple choice questions you'll encounter on boards, and...

How to study for the Step 1 USMLE, part 1

How to study for the Step 1 USMLE, part 1

It's April, which means you're probably studying for boards. Or maybe you haven't started studying, but you've spent a lot of time worrying about studying, which in my opinion is even more taxing emotionally. I posted this strategy for studying for boards a while...